The invention relates to an incinerator and fume separator for efficiently burning various types of materials, such as trash, sewage sludge, shredded scrap tires, coal, etc., at temperatures up to about 1800.degree. F., while removing about 90% of all deleterious gases, such as SO.sub.2, NO.sub.2 and particulates so as to avoid pollution of the atmosphere by the gases exhausted from the incinerator. The unusual mechanism by which the pollutants are removed from the waste gas to produce a virtually clean exhaust gas is achieved by means of the special fume separator system employed herein in tandem with other mechanisms for removing the particulate materials, which fume separating device, etc., will be subsequently described. The heat produced from such incineration will be used to generate steam to heat various public buildings, hospitals, nursing homes, etc. at the rate of 20,000 to 500,000 pounds of steam per hour and serve populations in towns or cities of 25,000 to 100,000 people. Alternately, the steam produced can be used to drive a steam generator for producing electrical power to air condition said establishments.
During this time of rapidly diminishing fuel sources and the skyrocketing cost of heating homes and generating electricity by the conventional oil powered systems, a great amount of research and technology has been invested in searching for alternative and economically feasible fuel substitutes for the expensive petroleum based fuel sources. Among the most important avenues of research are those which have concentrated upon the use of various waste materials, particularly trash, sewage sludge and other materials having combustible potential or calorific value. The discovery of a system or apparatus capable of efficiently burning trash would serve the various objectives of (1) using these waste products as a source of energy; (2) efficiently disposing of these waste products; and (3) reducing land fill problems; thereby serving to clean up the environment.
While attempts have been made to incinerate sewage sludge and trash in an effort to generate steam heat and/or electricity, these attempts have not been altogether successful in that it has been difficult to satisfy the rather stringent environmental regulations set by the E.P.A. This is especially true when the raw products of combustion have a high sulfur and/or nitrogen content and especially plastic materials composed of chlorinated hydrocarbons which generate hydrochloric acid upon entering the atmosphere.
To counteract the problems involved in burning the aforementioned contaminated materials, efforts have been made to neutralize the gaseous products with alkaline materials. Thus, such means as wet scrubbers have been employed in which the alkaline material is cascaded over a series of packing materials in a vertical chamber so that the alkaline material is countercurrent to the upward flow of the contaminated gas. While this has been effective in purifying exhaust or stacked gases of a low to average acid content, the prior art systems have not been satisfactory for burning materials capable of generating high concentration of acids, such as scrap tires, certain sludge materials and, of course, coal which has a high sulfur content.